No more!" they swear; I laugh to hear them speak.

And Tubal-Cain who lurks where the shadows shake:

"Break up the swords!" his jaws like iron creak;

"Faster than you may break them, I shall make!"

Yes, break the swords--the old were far too blunt--

Make newer blades with edges diamond keen,

That when we strike, the breasts that bear the brunt

May thrill to beauty of their deathly sheen--

Oh, men who died in Flanders' bloody field,

Against the days to be, Death is your shield.

 

Robert E. Howard

Recompense

 

I have not heard lutes beckon me, nor the brazen bugles call,

But once in the dim of a haunted lea I heard the silence fall.

I have not heard the regal drum, nor seen the flags unfurled,

But I have watched the dragons come, fire-eyed, across the world.

 

I have not seen the horsemen fall before the hurtling host,

But I have paced a silent hall where each step waked a ghost.

I have not kissed the tiger-feet of a strange-eyed golden god,

But I have walked a city's street where no man else had trod.

 

Midnight

 

Red leaned his elbows upon the table and cursed. The candle guttered low. The bottle was empty, and a slow fire coiled in our brains--the fire which devours and consumes and destroys but never leaps into full wild flame.

 

I cannot believe in a paradise

Glorious, undefiled,

For gates all scrolled and streets of gold

Are tales for a dreaming child.